


Not special

by Gabriel4Sam



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Padmé Amidala Lives, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies
Language: Français
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:13:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27698126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gabriel4Sam/pseuds/Gabriel4Sam
Summary: Anakin is dead and Padmé must build back her life, renouncing a lot of what was her life. Perhaps she can learn that not everything had to be grand gestures, starting with observing a quiet love she never would have imagined.
Relationships: Dexter Jettster/Obi-Wan Kenobi, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 17
Kudos: 72





	Not special

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jubbles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jubbles/gifts).



Not all loves are planet-burning fires. Not all love are life-changing, taking everything else with them when finished.

Not all love can push someone to burn the Republic down and to put a hand in genocide, just to be sure a certain Senator who may or may not die in childbirth wouldn’t.

Or perhaps, simply, a love for which you would murder children, change good men into automaton and destroy democracy was not really a love, simply a twisted, gnarled thing.

Anakin Skywalker was more in love with the idea of Padme Amidala than with Padme herself, and as the world is slowly rebuilding itself, it’s a hard pill to swallow for poor Padme. She is very, very, very aware of what a close call it was.

Hundreds of Jedi are dead, a lot of clones put a blaster in their mouths once they were free of the chip, the entire political system will have to be remade from scratch to be sure nothing like Palpatine rise to power is possible again, and the consequences of the war pushed billions of people into exile, poverty and other horrors.

Padme herself is facing the possibility of jail-time: stripped of her rank, she’s in deep trouble on Naboo, between the people thinking she was in collusion with Palpatine, the people thinking she was too busy frolicking around with her Jedi to do her job and stop Palpatine, the people thinking she was in collusion with Anakin herself…. Her friends are throwing their weight around trying to help, and her parents found her a very good lawyer, but she will be happy if she escape that only with community service. She probably will have to thank the Jedi in general for that, who refused the numerous solicitations from the throne of Naboo to pursue Padme from marrying Anakin when he was a minor, and Obi-Wan in particular, who bore witness of Anakin’s attack of Padme and stood firm in his defence of the young woman.

It’s making Padme deeply uncomfortable. She thinks of Obi-Wan as a friend, a friend she lied to for years, again and again, and who saved her life on Mustafar when he killed Anakin, while Master Yoda saved the Republic when he killed Palpatine.

He even found her a place to stay, when she didn’t want to stay with any of her political friends, not ready to burn their careers by her simple contact as she had burned her own, and didn’t want to go back to Naboo.

It’s a very small apartment, right above a dinner, in a part of Coruscant she never would have visited when she was a Senator. The diner’s owner is male Besalik, who cooks in the dinner and live in the other small apartment above the dinner. He’s very friendly, always ready to babysit the twin when she has an errand to run.

He’s also the lover of Obi-Wan, who she sometimes meet in the stairs late in the night or very early in the morning. He always look drained when he arrives: Yoda succumbed to his wounds after the fight with Sidious and there are not enough Jedi left, all of them, the survivors of the few days Order 66 was implemented, exhausted, working themselves to the bone, trying to heal a galaxy which in their time of need didn’t come to their help. Trying to rebuild for people who let them, with a few exceptions like Bail Organa, be gunned down.

She wanted to tear the Jedi Master’s eyes out, in the beginning. If he had told Anakin…how dare he, when Anakin was dead, worse than dead, dead and his name spat on all across the galaxy.

One day, as she is thanking Dex for another afternoon of kid-sitting, it’s the Besalik who address the issue.

“Anakin knew.”

“But-He would have told me!”

“Told you what? That his former Master had a lover? Someone Obi-Wan would leave for months, years, if necessary, to do his duty.” The Besalik had sadly shaken his massive head.

“Anakin never thought Obi-Wan loved me. It didn’t count, in his eyes.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not a pretty young woman like you? Because Obi-Wan would let me die if he had a choice between me and an innocent life? Because Obi-Wan will only give me the morsels he can, and keep his duty in his heart? Who knew what Anakin thought? He saw Obi-Wan wouldn’t break every rule for me, would love me without keeping me, and for Anakin, it wasn’t love. Not burning enough. Not big enough. Obi-Wan loves me as Jedi should, without possessing, and for Anakin, that’s not love. ”

He pats her shoulder, his hand dwarfing it.

“You have two tadpoles, now. You can’t stay thinking of what was, what could have been.”

“You sound like Master Yoda.”

She bit her lips. For years, she had nodded and believed Anakin when the younger man presented Yoda as an obstacle to overcome. Now that the little Jedi had died saving what could be, she felt guilty, and angry, and quite possibly very lost.

“It’s not good for you, to stay in your apartment reviewing your case and thinking of the past,” he continued, “and I won’t advise you to meditate, like Obi-Wan probably would if you stopped evading each other like two tookas who share the same territory but are not ready to fight it out.”

“What will you advice, then?”

“Come to the dinner. I can’t offer a big salary, just an honest one. It won’t change the world, but people will be feed and it will give you a stepping stone to rebuild. Probably won’t buy a Naboo pretty palace with it, but you will feed your kids with your own money, not something from Senator Amidala than the Naboo Queen can freeze or seize, with the trial, or something that your family give you. And the people…It’s good, to see people happy after a good meal.”

He shrugs, and it’s like an earthquake on his abundant flesh.

She takes the job.

Years later, after Obi-Wan has been killed on mission, Dex retires to his home world and leave the dinner to Padme. She looks around, suddenly realizing how many years have passed.

And they were peaceful and not at all an encompassing fire of burning passion, and her children are happy and, more or less, well-adjusted. Not the powerful people Anakin would have wanted them to be, capable of changing the galaxy, just a professor in the lower levels, working in one of the programmes against illiteracy created by Chancellor Organa, for Luke, and a cargo pilot for Leia.

It’s not special.

Anakin would hate that.

Padme shrugs and go back to the ledgers of the dinner.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr too, under the same username, come and say hi!


End file.
